The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods for estimating the magnitude and distance of turbulent pockets of air.
Clear air turbulence is turbulence that results where there are no clouds, precipitation, or visible particles such as dust in the air. When an aircraft encounters clear air turbulence at cruising altitudes, serious injury to occupants in the aircraft may result.
Clear air turbulence is difficult to forecast and even more difficult to detect with conventional methods. For example, some conventional methods use weather forecasts, pilot reports, accelerometer measurements, radar measurements, laser radar measurements, acoustic measurements, global positioning system (GPS) scintillation measurements and/or optical measurements to estimate or predict clear air turbulence. However, these methods can suffer from not adequately estimating or predicting the clear air turbulence under some conditions, such as not accurately predicting air turbulence in clear air. Thus, with current systems and methods, clear air turbulence is difficult to forecast and almost impossible to detect.